A 73-year-old woman drove straight through the front window of Solar Nails in Waukesha on Friday morning, after apparently mistaking her gas pedal for the brake while pulling into a parking spot for her nail appointment. Waukesha police said no one inside the salon was hurt in the crash, which happened around 10:55 a.m. at the shop’s location on West St. Paul Avenue.
According to WISN, the woman was the only person in the vehicle and was arriving for her appointment when the pedal mix-up sent her car into the storefront. As CBS 58 reports, police confirmed she mistook the gas for the brake while attempting to park. One woman went to Waukesha Memorial Hospital afterward for a checkup, though it’s unclear from available reports whether that was the driver or someone connected to the salon.
A Storefront Built for Head-In Parking
Solar Nails sits at 2140 W. St. Paul Ave., inside a commercial strip center whose tenants also include Great Clips and Sally Beauty, according to business listings for the plaza. That kind of layout, where head-in parking spaces face directly into shop windows, is common at strip malls and puts glass storefronts squarely in the path of any car that lurches forward instead of stopping.
ProHealth Waukesha Memorial Hospital, where the woman sought her post-crash checkup, is a 272-bed acute care hospital about five minutes from central Waukesha, per ProHealth Care. The hospital runs a Level 3 emergency room and serves as the county’s primary acute care facility, making it the natural stop for anyone checked out after a low-speed but jarring collision like Friday’s.
A Familiar Pattern Nationwide
Friday’s crash fits a pattern researchers have tracked for years: a driver moving slowly into a parking spot presses the wrong pedal and ends up inside a building instead of stopping short of it. The Storefront Safety Council estimates that roughly 100 vehicle-into-building crashes happen every day across the country, causing about 16,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths annually, with commercial strip malls and convenience stores accounting for more than a third of those locations…